


After

by Elfflame



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-30
Updated: 2006-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 23:29:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfflame/pseuds/Elfflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Catsmeow – Cedric/Harry</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

It was only ten years later that he fully understood his loss that day.  Yes, seeing someone he'd been getting to know killed had been terrible, had scarred him deeply, almost as deeply as the loss of Sirius.  But it was only going through his memories of that year in a Pensieve that other feelings began to show themselves.

Seeing Cedric before the World Cup: surprise, and just the smallest amount of pleasure at seeing him.  How had he missed that at the time?  Hearing that Cedric would be putting his name in to compete: bemusement, but also just the smallest bit of concern.  After all, people had died...  

That remembrance had sent Harry into a tailspin for several days, and it had been a great deal longer before he'd examined his memories of actually competing with the older boy.  Really, not that much older.  Just three years in his mid-twenties seemed far less of a distance than when he'd been fourteen.

Watching it all again tore Harry apart, but he couldn't stop.  Cedric's horror at learning of the dragons.  He wanted to pull that boy, who'd seemed so much older at the time, into his arms, to comfort him.  He'd been too young.  They all had.  Cedric repaying the favour by allowing him to use the Prefect's bath.  What if Cedric had joined him?  Would things have ended differently?  Likely not, but maybe Harry might have realized what he was feeling sooner.  Maybe they would have shared more than a portkeyed journey to Cedric's fate.

He found himself watching the memories of him over and over, until the threads of the memories became so worn that they began to fray, and Harry was unable to watch them without the memory breaking on him.  He found himself staring at boys on the street, dark-haired, tall boys of about seventeen, looking for the right face.  It was never him, of course.  He knew that Cedric would be older than he had he survived, but for him, Cedric would always be seventeen, eternally young and beautiful.

And Harry would never stop looking.


End file.
